USAID’s Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Activity and The Society for Implementation Science in Nutrition

To Whom It May Concern,

The Society for Implementation Science in Nutrition (SISN) is a new scientific and professional society whose vision is “A world where actions to improve nutrition are designed and implemented with the best available scientific knowledge and practical experience”.

Our membership includes researchers, implementers and other stakeholders committed to the goal of strengthening implementation and impact at scale.

We are directing this announcement to all potential organizations applying for USAID’s Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Activity (MSNA). We note that IR3 includes the objective (3.2) “service delivery systems and scale up strengthened through implementation research” and an objective (3.3) that includes the “…use of evidence for nutrition policies, programs and systems increased.” We are enthusiastic that USAID plans to include implementation research as part of the contract.

As a scientific and professional society, SISN is not constituted or seeking to join any particular consortium at the pre-award stage. Instead, we are announcing our desire to work with whichever entity is successful through the competition, to explore mutually beneficial collaborations.

For instance:

The collaboration could foster the formation and/or strengthening of local “implementation science alliances” consisting of a network of researchers and implementers in those countries.

SISN could draw from its global membership base to identify SISN Fellows (graduate students and junior researchers and implementers) to contribute to the project for varying periods of time, thereby gaining experience and becoming active members and future leaders in SISN and in their own countries.

SISN could collaborate with the SUN Movement and other institutions to organize field visits of researchers and implementers from other SUN countries to learn from the experiences in MSNA sites.

SISN could form a working group from among its members, to act as third-party “learning facilitators” and knowledge brokers that would be of value to local staff and beyond, making use of SISN’s global dissemination platforms and strategies. This working group could also formalize these observations to feed into, and support, an internal evaluation of the project at various junctures.

From SISN’s point of view, having access to the cumulative experiences of MSNA would give us access to valuable ground-level insights and accelerate our ability to generate practical methods and know-how.

These are just a few of the examples. We anticipate others could be developed over time, through interaction between SISN and MSNA awardee.

If your consortium is interested in pursuing these or other ideas after the contract is issued, we encourage you to indicate that intention in your application, along with non-binding illustrations of potential collaborations. Out of fairness to all applicants, we do not wish to engage in detailed discussions with individual applicants before the award is issued but we will publish clarifying questions and our answers on our website and alert you of these via email. Please provide us with your email if you wish to be included in the alerts.